What is likely to happen to the directors of Carillion who were in charge while the group lurched towards the rocks, leaving enormous debts, unbuilt hospitals, a black hole in the pension fund and nervous employees in its wake?

Not much, is the depressing answer. Former chief executive Richard Howson was, as we revealed last week, still slated to receive his £660,000 basic salary plus £28,000 of perks until October. This has now been stopped, but he made nearly £6million while in the job.

In theory, it might be possible for the current board or the liquidators to claw back some bonuses, but good luck with that. In practice, companies are wary of taking on directors and risking legal disputes.

Former chief executive Richard Howson received his £660k basic salary plus £28k of perks until October

Lloyds Bank had a go, when the new management refused to pay part of a 2012 bonus to former boss Eric Daniels, who was at the helm for the disastrous takeover of HBOS and the PPI mis-selling scandal.

Daniels has now filed a court challenge.

If directors have misbehaved and a company goes under, for instance by trading while insolvent or not keeping proper accounts, they can be disqualified for up to 15 years.

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This is a credible threat for entrepreneurs running small and medium firms – hundreds of them are banned every year.

But examples of high-profile disqualifications are rare and slow in coming, probably because executives, advised by big bucks lawyers, are careful to stay the right side of the law and the governance codes.

Directors of Farepak, including former CBI president Sir Clive Thompson, were threatened with disqualification in 2012 after the Christmas hamper company went bust leaving more than 100,000 people out of pocket, but the Insolvency Service withdrew its case.

I can think of only a very few actual bans. The most recent big names are probably the so-called 'Phoenix Four', the quartet of businessmen who were in charge of the MG Rover group when it collapsed in 2005.

They voluntarily agreed six years later to bans of varying length, while denying any wrongdoing.

Kevin Maxwell, son of the pension fraudster Robert, was prohibited in 2012 from acting as a company director for eight years over a Manchester-based building company called Syncro Ltd which went under with a £10million hole in its accounts.

Carillion has leaving enormous debts following its collapse

But even when a big case does result in a ban, it is no bar to self-reinvention. Ten directors of Barings, which went under in 1995, were eventually disqualified, including the former chief executive Peter Norris, who was unlucky as he had only been in the top job a short time when the bank went down.

After his ban expired, he bounced back and became chairman of Virgin Group, Sir Richard Branson's holding company.

Barings seemed dramatic at the time, but it was a fleabite compared with the big bank collapses that followed: RBS and HBOS. But the worst that happened with those two banks was a bit of knighthood deprivation for former chiefs Fred Goodwin and James Crosby.

It might be argued that there is no need to ban the likes of Fred, because who would hire him anyway? Goodwin did make a brief comeback of sorts at an architecture firm, but now spends his time golfing.

Look at Andy Hornby, though. Late of the HBOS parish, he worked for a while as boss of Boots before going into gambling.

His bet paid off: he's in line for a £10 million windfall from the merger of Ladbrokes with GVC Holdings, where he is a senior manager.

Punishments for directors of wrecked firms are not as simple as they might at first seem. It is not always reasonable to roll out the tumbrels, and if we persecute directors for failure – an inevitable part of capitalism – then talented people will stay out of the arena.

Corporate collapses are normally complex failures. The fair attribution of blame – morally or legally – is hard, and populist outrage does not necessarily lead to fair outcomes.

Having said all of that, it still should be possible to hold directors to account far better than this.